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Multilingual Margins 5(1) 40 Multilingual Margins 2018, 5(1): 40-65 Language, food and gentrification: signs of socioeconomic mobility in two Gothenburg neighbourhoods Johan Järlehed University of Gothenburg, Department of Languages and Literatures Helle Lykke Nielsen University of Southern Denmark, Centre for the Middle East Studies Tove Rosendal University of Gothenburg, Department of Languages and Literatures Correspondence to: [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper examines at how language and food intersect and interact in gentrification processes. As a capital-driven social process aiming at enhancing the socioeconomic value of urban space, gentrification implies mobility both in the sense that it attracts new people, businesses and capital to an area, and in the form of displacement of less affluent and prestigious people, businesses and semiotic resources from central to marginal urban spaces. The paper examines linguistic and visual traces of such mobilities in two neighbourhoods in Gothenburg, Sweden. Based on the observation that food and food practices are central for the production and reproduction of social distinction, the analysis centres on food related establishments and signs. In particular, it discusses the distinction-making function of prestigious languages, elite gastronomic registers, and gourmet food trucks, and how these depend on the marginalization of low status languages, popular gastronomic registers and cheap generic food carts. People’s interaction with these resources contributes to the reconfiguration of social and urban space. Keywords: gentrification, distinction, gastronomic register, food trucks, linguistic landscape © Järlehed, Lykke Nielsen, Rosendal and CMDR. 2018 Language, food and gentrification 41 INTRODUCTION but also through flows and (im)mobility of people, products, and capital (Lou Cities are in constant change as people 2016). Patterns of socioeconomic (im) and capital move in and out of particular mobility leave physical and linguistic neighbourhoods. Cities also feature social traces in urban space, and such inequalities as economic wealth, cultural traces look different in economically capital, and political power are unevenly advantaged and disadvantaged spaces, distributed. The city of Gothenburg, or in what Stroud and Mpendukana Sweden, is no exception. In 2021, the (2009) call ‘sites of luxury’ and ‘sites of city celebrates its 400th anniversary and necessity’. for this occasion large parts of the city Food has always been a central are being rebuilt and renovated. As part ingredient of life, as both nourishment of the anniversary vision, the city council and culture. However, within present stresses the increased socio-cultural and day urban landscapes and lifestyles, linguistic diversity of the inhabitants especially in gentrified areas, food resulting from immigration and has become even more important as a underlines the importance of creating resource for the production of symbolic an open and inclusive ambience (City and economic value (Berg and Sevón of Gothenburg 2018). The renovations 2014; Roe, Sarlöv Herlin, and Speak and reconstructions imply changes that 2016). At the same time, patterns of social not only affect people who live and work inequality are reflected in which cuisines, in specific areas, but also create new and associated ‘languages’ and ‘cultures’, patterns of mobility by attracting new are seen as trendy and prestigious, and visitors to these areas. which are not (Martin 2014). Gentrification emerges as a central In this paper, we want to tie these process and concept for the study of observations together as we analyse socioeconomic mobility in urban spaces. the semiotic landscape (Jaworski and Simply understood as the socioeconomic Thurlow 2010) in two Gothenburg upscaling of a neighbourhood and its neighbourhoods. In particular, we inhabitants, gentrification has been examine how food and language – broadly widely discussed within social sciences understood – interact in the making (see e.g. Shaw 2008; Zukin 2010), but of place, and how specific linguistic less so within language studies (see varieties and gastronomic registers Papen 2012; Lyons and Rodríguez- displayed on food-related establishments Ordóñez 2015; Trinch and Snajdr 2017 function within gentrification and for exceptions). Being both driven migration processes. Throughout the by and contributing to the unequal analysis we are concerned with inequality distribution of power, capital, and space, as materialized in practices of social gentrification is intimately linked to differentiation and spatial segregation. socio-economic mobility and segregation (Holgersson and Thörn 2014). The linguistic landscape of a GastrONOMIC REGISTERS, neighbourhood is embedded both in (IM)MOBILITY AND activities on the local scale, among its residents and visitors, and on a translocal SCALING IN URBAN SPACE scale through use of specific global, The city has been described as ‘a mosaic international languages and registers, of polarised geographies of wealth, social © Järlehed, Lykke Nielsen, Rosendal and CMDR. 2018 42 JÄRLEHED, LYKKE NIELSEN & ROSENDAL status, health, ethnicity and gender’, and Gentrification is linked to language (Giolla Chríost 2007: 10). This migration and segregation in dynamic means that we can expect noticeable and complex ways. Many researchers differences between different areas of a have shown how gentrification processes city: language, money, space, and power contribute to spatial segregation within are unevenly distributed. At the same cities, since people with lesser resources time, cities are in constant movement are forced to move out of gentrified and change, and people with different neighbourhoods. Shortell (2016: backgrounds and social positions are 223) argues that ‘the more immigrant living, working and moving side by side. neighbourhoods are stigmatized, the However, differences are often upheld easier it is for urban planners and despite mobility: people tend to stick to developers [...] to frame gentrification their own group and class, creating a sort as a solution to the problem’ (see also of ‘uneasy co-existence’ (Shortell 2016: Holgersson 2014). At the same time, and 80) or ‘parallel play’ (DeSena 2012: 82) to a certain extent, different groups often of distinct groups. The (re)production of co-exist in gentrified neighbourhoods difference and distinction then emerges since ‘members of the ethnic/racial as a core activity of urban life. As will be majority (higher in class and status) often illustrated by the analysis presented in regard the presence of other groups as this paper, this can be seen in the ‘scalar a desirable characteristic, part of what practices’ and ‘scalar work’ (Carr and makes the neighbourhood exotic or gritty, Lempert 2016) involved in gentrification or even authentic’ (Shortell 2016: 210). processes, whereby particular semiotic This is no surprise as long as the Others resources are used for (re)producing not are too many, or associated with low and challenging social imagination and status groups, places, and languages (see differentiation tied to place. Such semiotic our analysis of the differentiated use resources include, but are not limited and value of Arabic in different parts of to, national languages and indexes, Gothenburg below). i.e. words and expressions associated As shown by Trinch and Snajdr with specific languages and cultures. (2017), a core feature of gentrification Furthermore, they include varied is distinction. Distinction then does constellations of ‘visual multilingualism’ not just mean that something is (Kelly-Holmes 2014) and forms linked different from something else, but that to what we here call gastronomic this difference is socio-economically registers, that is, ‘ways of speaking’ in recognized and valued (Bourdieu 1984). relation to food products and practices Trinch and Snajdr (2017) identify two (e.g. merchandising, consumption) that types of signs which are vital when index socially imagined configurations analysing economic and social aspects of of class, ethnicity and (im)mobility. As ongoing gentrification processes: ‘Old signalled by the quotation marks, we School Vernacular’ and ‘Distinction- develop a multimodal and socio-semiotic making signage’. ‘Old school’ signs understanding of register as comprising index capitalism without distinction, by visuals, colour, (typo)graphic design in including all languages used by people addition to verbal ‘language’. living in the neighbourhood, thus bringing inclusivity in the neighbourhood economy. Contrary to this, distinction- making signage represents ‘an exclusivity © Järlehed, Lykke Nielsen, Rosendal and CMDR. 2018 Language, food and gentrification 43 that for some readers also represents that when we are examining the rhythm exclusion’ (ibid.: 64). These signs are of a particular place we must take into often minimalistic (for example, they account human, linguistic, institutional, use one word or a short phrase in and built features. Mobility within a city reduced font size, often with lower case is dynamic and varies from place to place letters) and frequently display playful and with time. metareferences, polysemic or cryptic In line with critical sociolinguistics’ names, or use languages that index and discourse analysis’ intents to sophistication and worldliness (ibid.: reveal and counter social inequality, we 75). In distinction-making signs the use approach the notion of language as ‘a set of languages is symbolic or fetishised of resources which circulate
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